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If your new iPhone needs a new battery any time soon, you may not want to bother replacing it yourself or heading to your local third-party shop. Thanks to a change on Apple's part, you'll be basically left with a permanent warning message if you do.

iFixit reports that replacing a battery in the iPhone XR, XS, or XS Max generates a "service" message saying the phone is "unable to verify this iPhone has a genuine Apple battery." The phone will also not display any battery health readings.

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The change is due to the chip on the battery itself. In addition to being able to relay information about battery cycles and temperature to the phone, the chips on the newer iPhone models also have an authentication feature for pairing with a specific phone.

The issue persists even if you use a genuine, authorized Apple battery, iFixit says. The only way to make the service message go away? Take the phone to an Apple store or Apple-authorized service center, where they can flip whatever software switch needs to be reset.

Apple is not alone on this front, either. Consumer goods, from phones to tractors, increasingly require direct manufacturer intervention to fix. Whether the issue is a copyright claim on software or a hardware restriction like Apple's, the outcome is the same: product owners spend more money and have fewer options. The "right to repair" movement pushes for legislation and regulation that requires first-party firms to make service manuals, diagnostic tools, and parts available to consumers and repair shops.

Apple has a track record of opposing right to repair laws, The company frames it as a matter of consumer trust rather than revenue. "We want to make sure our customers always have confidence their products will be repaired safely and correctly, and in a way that supports recycling," the company told Axios this week.

Having recently moved to a location that it outside of a day's drive from an Apple store, this is a hateful decision on the part of sales and marketing. I will not be purchasing a Google infested device anytime soon but any other competitor that offers a phone that has decent security and privacy will be immediately considered.

Having recently moved to a location that it outside of a day's drive from an Apple store, this is a hateful decision on the part of sales and marketing. I will not be purchasing a Google infested device anytime soon but any other competitor that offers a phone that has decent security and privacy will be immediately considered.

the worst bit is i dont want to go back to android. android is not an experience i want to go back to anymore. Im double over a barrel since i want a device with fingerprint scanner still...guess ill have to keep my 8 plus even longer.

This is anti environmentalist also. Every device that could have been repaired, but wasn't because of a dick move like this, can end up in a landfill. Even if you 'recycle' it the recycler could just throw it away or export it to a 3rd world where it sits on a pile of garbage picked through by hand by some poor villagers.

Having recently moved to a location that it outside of a day's drive from an Apple store, this is a hateful decision on the part of sales and marketing. I will not be purchasing a Google infested device anytime soon but any other competitor that offers a phone that has decent security and privacy will be immediately considered.

It would be nice to separate hardware, OS, software, and services (ads, telemetry) into separate businesses... but then I also have four nieces that would each like their own unicorn.

Fell for the clickbait headline. Apple doesn't prevent third party repair, just discourages it. Like any manufacturer with repair services would ever encourage it.

iFixit reports that replacing a battery in the iPhone XR, XS, or XS Max generates a "service" message saying the phone is "unable to verify this iPhone has a genuine Apple battery." The phone will also not display any battery health readings.

Out of curiosity, how often do you currently replace your iPhone battery? Is this a common thing people do frequently?

Internet hate machine aside, how big of a disruption is this to most normal users?

You mean aside from that big scandal recently where it was found that cpu performance degrades as the battery ages and that a worn battery can even cause crashes and shutdowns long before the battery is dead?

I loved this quote

"We want to make sure our customers always have confidence their products will be repaired safely and correctly, and in a way that supports recycling,"